Excerpt: He has two options on the debates. It’s not an option to skip them entirely, although no doubt he’d prefer to do that. That would be interpreted, correctly, as cowardice, which would devastate his image as an alpha male. (Bad enough that he’d run away, but to run away from a woman?) So he’s stuck doing at least one. The smart play would be to study his ass off and shock the country with his surprising grasp of policy at the first debate. Everyone will be expecting Trump the loudmouthed clod; if instead they get Trump the statesman battling Hillary to a standstill, it’ll show millions of casual voters that all of the hype about Trump being unready for the presidency was nonsense. And rest assured, there will be many millions of casual voters watching: The first debate between Romney and Obama drew nearly 70 million viewers, double what their speeches at the conventions that summer drew. A Trump/Clinton debate might blow the roof off in terms of viewership. As such, Trump delivering a surprising standout performance could change the election overnight by moving huge swaths of undecideds into his column. And, having delivered that, he could then preserve his victory by boycotting the second and third debates under whatever pretext he likes. All he has to do is turn in one excellent debate. And all he has to do to achieve that is prepare diligently.